somewhere in my incapacities

For some reason, sleep betrays my eyes the moment I crave for your dreams.

The aching chafed soul drowning in the sheer wretchedness of loss, like the first sudden epiphany about the legends of fairy folk or geriatric bearded man making wishes come true.

The way you strike rock bottom only to realize seconds later that some more quagmires are yet to be braved; it continues to be a string of endless disappointments.

I fail miserably at all attempts to create poetry out of translucent longings.
I write,  erase only to re-write some more,
and hence emerges a shadow-play of all the wishes unfulfilled and left floating in the air, against the bright flames of our dried hushed voices, covered behind a veneer of raw desire.

I aspire to be as blatant as your advances and demure as all my attempts to escape.
My sighs offer a voice-over, amidst the dull percussions of life pulsing through our necks.

I aspire to write out my careless exhausted insanity that refuses to slip into submission, the way you often evade my imagination in the commute of voices following us.

The way you find ways to trick the elements around me
 as more often than not we unravel earth beneath a veil of fire and water trickling through the pockets of wind.

We’ve woven stories out of unsaid desires before haven’t we anyway?
Like that time you fell off a poetry only to fall quietly in my arms or the times when by breaths silently took your form.

Like your common aliases, silence and the quiet,
I crave for you again in this un-scripted un-rhymed poetry of mine.
Try not to fail me, if you please.

As for me, I shall be just sitting here gazing at the meandering thoughts of you sorting through my memories instead.
As you grope around for words which quietly replace the pictures in your head.  Pictures, cunning, capricious and fickle, threatening to flit past at the speed of one breaths too many, or heartbeat skipped through.
I shall see you wandering amidst fragmented clouds in rich sepia sky looking for that prayer thought out aloud.
 Torschlusspanik- a fear of time running out, of running out of opportunities, of moments unlived, I shall see you panic and maybe that might set me free.

For the time being, let’s assume me absent, un-aware, imaginary, like the characters of an unfinished fiction spread out in the sleepy Sunday sun soaked yard.
let you  be scared of me slipping away, as I watch.

 For now let me just go by my selfish intentions and let you jot down the dreams that haunt you always with my presence, let me breath in your sighs, and trickle down the back of your neck.

I shall be there, at the sheer horizon of my absence.

ramblings untitled

They say the best of works stem from melancholy.
That when you seem not to mind reaching anywhere you carve the best of roads in your way.
She, to the world is just a tiny figure carved in silence. She apparently curls comfortably somewhere within her perfect personal space.
She is being  just a tiny figment of an old lore, by the sunlight filtering through soft curls.
To the world she is just that.
She sees enormous waves crashing against steep cliffs. Labyrinthine blues and mountain music wrapped in benign white linen.
A bundle of contradictions wrapped up in floral scarves, that when the veneer of plainness thins down, out explodes a billowing smoke in rich mauve, crimson in blue.
Colors of the utopian dream, in her own personal choices.
Momentary  lapses of reasons that visit the quarters in hours hidden from the world, that no-one sees nor defines ever.
It’s a kaleidoscope of words,  a chiaroscuro of whispers played by the tiny hollow beneath the ears where dreams usually trickle down to nothingness,  an estuary where lullabies and nightmares flow as one.
In a body betrayed by desire, there stand some virgin fires never having seen the light of the day.
There stand some silent sentinels of love unstirred, unshaken of pure aboriginal innocence.
There stand I somewhere between her eyes and a blurry dream forming miles away.
In the tiny fingers entwined in honest  untangled lost.
In silent promises made to herself, wilting beneath the pillow, some unfortunate personal biases squirming , pulsing within the delicate ankles and wrists.
There stand I always helping her stay afloat.

a muse resurrected of blood and ashes

A thousand words in her voice haunting the damp celtic quarters, her peaceful sighs punctuating my sleeps, and the perennial mist that infests the bay windows, she’d be as imaginary as evolution itself.
At the least, to the world she’s still surreal in the mute portraits adorning their walls.

There she stands, or lies rather, as a silent sentinel of the floodgates,
guarding the guarded, snatched away from me everyday just because some other man ‘feels’ he could relate to her mute predicament.

My nonexistent muse,
 my Ariadne of the labyrinthine subconscious that I nurse.

Gracing me albeit , of her presence a few auspices  more than the vernal equinox.

she of the pristine blithe flesh and raw gaping wounds
she of long calloused fingers entwined in my hair.
and a proven necessity, if you ask me
to sit before an easel by the break of dawn.

My sparkling aquamarine in the deep recesses of dreams,
my ecstatic sighs spread on the canvas.
one night too many obscured in psychedelia,
my precious,
of the trembling hands, and bruised lips.

a stolen figment of my broken world,
of corpses in the armchairs,
and military tanks on streets.

a distinct rumble of agitation,
all stoic silences drawn over windows,
and yet dreams woven on threads of tears everynight.

She resurrects herself within me now and then,
only to adorn the naked walls of history.

and bleed,
in
silence.

dog or an oyster(written in collaboration with a friend, chytra)

A downpour tonight,
predicted with a thunder too many.
What shall i do about my sensitive hearing?
A thunder in my ears, multiplies ... up to infinity ...
And some incessant howls clouding my thoughts.

Why,
I'm harmless enough inside my shell
Day in and day out
...
Why do these sounds rattle my soul ...

They make jewels of my agony,

bead it and flaunt it as pride
Those tiny little allegories of pain,

of genuine gold-plated dog tears

And write about them sympathetically in old books dog eared
Hypocrites!

Or clink glasses a few,

of dead tonic and gin.

Over lonely dog-tales

No one sees through my eyes
They drown in their glory
To feel high!

The downpour tonight nevertheless,
shall be the end of it.

And furry little truths shall crawl out of their shells.

Oh no, they shall make no more jewels of dogs pretending to be oysters.

Not after
the
thunder
tonight.

For i shall howl too
And dance alone

Also dig a hole
to find a bone
And rest my shell
Free is my soul

 

lessons in wanderlust

Someday, just like one of these,
I'd simply
numb and quiet,
walk out of this shell.
A story engulfing me shall be shed, then a cast of dead skin if nothing else.

I moult through words, phrases, punctuations and names. In a constant flux of transition between what was once me to what is unknown.

I live in a fickle sense of reality,
the present being nothing more than a metaphor.
Like evolution, crawling out of ideas is what we call the essence of survival.

The way, a poet gathers the sand in his fist and lets it , again to seep into a distant reality.
A sand-dune to another.
One formless form to another.

The arrow of time piercing the thick vivid canvas of the metaphysical like everything else.
Like everything else,
my abstraction walking with me towards the needed disorder.
The way we all shall,
expanding hot masses of nebula destined to be a white dwarf.
Yes, somewhere in our lifetime, our brilliance shall stretch out to the horizon before fading, and leave behind a warmth.
A warmth of words, phrases, punctuations and yes,
names.

We all evolve.

‎*two dreams, verbatim*

That there,
that is a hoax.

don’t leave, 
don’t rise
stay
and breathe.

maybe. 

disintegrate.

******

you,
you are forbidden,
you are beautiful.

I self destruct.
I am invincible
and yet

helpless.

******

let’s drown the silences,
savor the quiet

Let them watch,
let
us
melt.

I made a scabbard of light.

Of late..
I’m more of pictures than words,
more of fiction than truth,
more of a folklore than memoir,
I’m my voice custom fitted into yours.

I know you from the old days,
when they’d just started sewing notes into symphonies,
and we shared the secret of the secret cult of musical notes..
I doubt you remember though,
it was way before the memories could be bottled nay?

Of late I’m no longer in your vicinity,
we do not share the same oblivion,

You sip dirty martinis,
I chase disentangled musical notes to the cellar,
(psst! The others, they write compositions)

I’m quite in the process,

Don’t rush me as of yet,
I’ll strip down word by word
only if you wait.

Patience.
(shhh!! The others might hear)

I might own a Persian grimalkin sometime in the future,
or a burgundy red Beetle,
or a seven-language thesaurus
or all of them together.

of late let my giggles just resonate in your ears,
while I take my daily tram to abyss and back.

Behold.
clasp your eyes shut and disappear!
that is how it is done.
yes , the others do it wrong!!

we shall hold hands till the end of tunnel
and then we disappear,
we’ll take it slow,

one step at a time

We’ll meet again.

yes we shall,
you of the dark-rimmed-intense-eyes,

And me,
of  chewed fingernails.

some other end of the tunnel sepia landscape
( the broken notes,
and the slurred songs?)

For now,
I'm just a fact robbed of all the lores,
and the staccato notes of a heady hilltop breeze
don't even make sense anymore.

There was a time once,
when my palms used to leave distinct impressions
callosities and creases alike,
merged into one,
form defying,
and defining the formless. 

not anymore..

Silences trickle down my mane where the turbulence of a forest fire once screamed.

Sweaty, determined metaphors which fail howsoever to create any noise.

I failed to create a me, the one you fell for.
And failed miserably.

I'm just a skeptical fact 
rhinestones and rubies,
but no smoke.

I implore you to see,
and shut your eyes thereafter.

As if I'm an apparition,
a trick of lights that you see.

Behold my naked silences and give them a name and identity if you could.

But not life.

No, for if they were alive
they'd run away from me again.

for all that is to you

Let me be
that one unfinished story that you'd never let go,
haunting your dreams
and reigning your silences.
That troublesome malingerer of sleep that visits under a shroud of thought blur.
...
Let me be those tiny cobwebs on the corners that you somehow always leave.

Let me be,
just an answer,
for all the questions hanging in the sultry night.

For now,
just don't find perfections to abandon me on my own.

Let me be
flawed,
weak,
never to recited out in the open.

An elaborate shame,
a consistent bother,
like the summer evenings that make you want to push away the dawn a little farther.

Some countless little rainbows on the arch of your back,
those tiny little beads of sweat,
that exist without much a commotion.
Let me be,
a comfortable inconvenience.
A caustic oxymoron.
Your favourite one-liner.
Your best pick-up lines.
Your layers and surfaces.
Everything that is not liable to disappear.

Let me be.

a well scripted sub-conscious

I am for this moment,

perhaps
not even a person.

... Just a pair of eyes,
seeing the seen,
or just a voice
whispering inside your head.

You,
yes your head.

It is me that you hear,
a dull stony non-syllable,
that was never not your own.

Never the silent hum of the ceiling fan,
or the million buzzing droplets stinging your face in the shower.

An ephemeral blank,
in the richer shades of blue,
a few drops me,
a few dollops you.

The glorious sloth,
of a thousand and one years,
is
on the brink of snapping off.
Some tense wires resonating music time and again.

A forced self-love,
and a sweaty ecstatic climax later.

why are you still awake?
While you can still call out my name,
or yours.
Have my wrists bound,
and your eyes shut tight.

Search for me,
while you are still alive.

P.s- tranquillizer twilight..

the absurdity that is US

Its been a year.
The concept of rains has changed from Darjeeling tea to semi-ground Columbian coffee beans.
Although grave hours of contemplation still require chewing paper.
The world is still a crumpled orb of discarded poetries, and elaborate love letters written the wrong way.
Its actually a huge transition from chewing the edge of your paper cups to tissue wiping rich plum lipsticks.
... We travel backward more often these days and my feet have these tiny bunions from standing on my toes time and again.
The rainbow has of late travelled one whole arch,
and is probably waiting to reach the other end.
You have more creases traversing that mole on your palm,
and I am yet to get that wisdom tooth removed.

We keep some old muffled giggles as a leftover,
like silly little hangnails,
that you keep nibbling on to kill time.
Its been a year, and we're still frozen in time,
calling out to the hushed planets of each other's names.

a tiny casket of eccentricities

Merging colors,
and fragrant essence of thought clouds
squeezed to oblivion,
It were your steps,

while I moved as if in a trance

.Let my feet not give away,
I wish to stay afloat

 a few thought clouds more..

for the love of absurdity

Give me a random world to explore,
or an unknown island lit all night by fire-flies.
Bring me the content hums of a lullaby pickled in tongues not yet discovered.
I crave to paint my eyes fuchsia, blue and white to rob them off my individuality,
to give them an alien expressiveness.
Let us be withering constellations over a dark planet,
waiting to crash and ignite.
Of late,
a dervish spun by my room,
crashing a coffee pot in his wake,
and thus,
my room is slathered in coffee,
and my coffee is left with bright illuminated glass shards.
Let's share these tiny rainbow bit by bit.

Rugged landscape of half-truths,
part-lores,
abyssmal noughts and dismal infinities,
I am a wanderer,
soaked in cognac,
bubbling fantasies,
dusky undertones
pop-art poesies.

You are succint half-a-dozen prose,
a pint imagination,
bottled-up rationed metaphors,
a grand burlesque Red and Gold,
dry vermouth and
tonic forsooth
fiery breaths,
rebellious,
bold

A heady cocktail,
you and me
exempli gratia
ecstasy firedrake
closed eyes
and compassioned souls.

the muse and the mistress

1. Always the prototype custody freak.
‘Patriarch for the purists’ says he,between puffs of smoke
then again, the countryside dawn isn’t exactly what we suppose it to be.
its just an inherited mansion,
its just an inherited space,
No metaphorical wilderness,
No omnipresent sepia shadows

and I am not complaining.

now, the way I’d write a prologue , our girl won’t be all flannel draped, safe fashionista sipping pink panthers, and why again does she have to have the bearings of a botticeli to snatch your attention.
but it so happened that I didn’t and when its him, you can always tell.

there’s always an aquiline nose to start with, one of our man’s lost causes as we’d come to know later in the course of story. There’s this insanely morose shroud of nonsensical prose geared cleverly to give one a taste of their own desires. The Freudian ego and the Id.
I’m tempted to call that reverse psychology a clever maneuver.
I’m tempted to claim him.
Claim him for myself
but not unless he has no claims over me,
I’m tempted for my own selfish will
tempted , in fact A LOT lately.

2. For starters, let me just –ever so strictly-warn you against the unsaid rule,
you do not breathe a word of this to ANYONE,
what I am about to entrust you with lies in the deep recesses of my clandestine head,
far from the asinine proclamations the world has made about him,
and the smoke-engulfed taciturn versions our man here is more than just ink and paper ramblings of weltschmerz , world weariness.

To get down to the detail, as he most lovingly prefers it to be,
an old dilapidated mansion , the rich Persian rug, and some colonial furniture
air thick with incense, and tobacco smoke, it might for sure take a while for you to navigate your way around the room.
and there he is, by the windowsill,
a sculputresque reticent figure with age dripping through his pores,
down to the placid grimalkin purring on his lap,

3. Contrary to his works, only a few have heard him talk,
through his words ,
the impeccable throaty renditions of some unfortunate trysts with faith, Earth, heaven or hell
scars borne out of life and death forsooth,
and then
for once Dante aligheri is just a crazy speculator.
those religious lords just swanky billboard adverts.

4. Our man seldom has favorites,
his eyes betray any presence of emotion,
but it is through these glassy conduits beneath the thick white brows,
that I saw the slightest footsteps to his heart,
That when one holds on to an enchantment,
he’s led on to intrigue
holding on to intrigue,
one finds obsession,
and when one is obsessed for quite a while…
voila!


5. so it is me, the favorite one,
me, of the aquiline nose, and slender spidery fingers
clutching the precarious Mediterranean silk on me,
all his yen packed into glittery packages,
into his blue-blooded mistress
a 16th century princess.

slurping the pink panthers nevertheless


6. Our man and his unusual ways,
and I’m the last person to be complaining,

am I not just ink and paper
another impeccably penned character,

at best-a muse, at worst- a puppet


7. ‘someday I shall soar up,
and then collapse on my own’

‘you sir, are in a mortal risk of being immortal’

‘that does not mean the world shall know you as mine’

‘someday, I shall soar up
and collapse to a zillion shards with your reflections ’

‘I can not for my life, let the world read you, be you or desire you’

‘But in any sense, wouldn’t they be reading YOU instead?’

a solitude together

For others they were formless-tired-smudged-kohl eyes, and incidentally it were your words that breathed life into them.
It was once again, while- as it were- ranting about how helplessly self-obsessed we are at times.
On a second thought isn't it what the lone and desolate world of reasoning permits.
I know what you might say to that.
You'd say that I was a bipolar double agent on a Counter-espionage team.
And then I'd laugh myself silly.

Some few months later,
Some few hundreds kilometres away
I wake up bleary eyed,
A week's worth of kohl hounding the hollows of my eyes.
And I lack your precision (at wiping all the stray smudges off)
I look for traces of your breaths trapped between the unsuspecting hyacinth.
Perhaps the oars shall strike upon some thoughts wondered aloud.
Or
Thoughts left midway.
Maybe the damp, sultry wind gives me enough to subsist,
Until the next time, when you untangle them somewhere near my ears.

'for crying out loud you are still the closet anarchist I left behind'

'isn't that pretty much ALL the luxury that solitude provides,
Or maybe,
My predilection towards loneliness is just an excuse
for having you all to myself.?'

my lost memoirs of you..

You know,
you are a fragrant description
of my tired eyes,
that you without fail,
succeed always,
in not being the person you are
while you sniff the air for assumptions,
fish the newspaper from beneath the carpet,
and sit quietly, unperturbed in the pillion seat,
singing by my ears.

no,
you are an entirely different someone when you write.
a bleeding truth,
a frozen rage,
some sweetly versed protests,
some ephemeral metaphors,
and longing
under a gallimaufry of names.
you are unheard of
in a tiny room in the back of your mind
with mirrors for walls.
oblivious,
intoxicated,
sorcerer,

a spinning dervish who
just touched me
and away he went
or perhaps
left a poetry tangled in my robe.

for now its you..

I like it when you try to fit in my tiny space,
when both of us know you NEED not..
That many once when you look out for yourself in a jumble of faces.
Even in the midst of The Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka and Long John Silver.
Or when you want to be my first ever crush,
even when you were nowhere around.
Being needed is somehow necessary for me to function as a person,
and yes,
that indeed defines me as 'self-obsessed'.
But hasn't life been comfortable that way.?
I DO like a few strands of my mane stuck to your (omnipresent) hoodie..
Like the mandarin moustache on your face that I drew,
Even the sight of your wallet nestled safely in my daybag (smug, for obvious reasons)
I like the fact that we have no GPS collars on each other and yet can tell a loo from the waiting room.
I like everything that I despised earlier.
Even my shattered rose tinted-glasses,
well atleast
for now I shall NOT be lost..

shadowplay

You know,
you are a fragrant description
of my tired eyes,
that you without fail,
succeed always,
in not being the person you are
while you sniff the air for assumptions,
fish the newspaper from beneath the carpet,
and sit quietly, unperturbed in the pillion seat,
singing by my ears.

no,
you are an entirely different someone when you write.
a bleeding truth,
a frozen rage,
some sweetly versed protests,
some ephemeral metaphors,
and longing
under a gallimaufry of names.
you are unheard of
in a tiny room in the back of your mind
with mirrors for walls.
oblivious,
intoxicated,
sorcerer,

a spinning dervish who
just touched me
and away he went
or perhaps
left a poetry in the wake.

the diary of a romantic- II

It doesn’t follow any set instructions. Does not come with a user’s manual, or a warrantee for that matter.
some days you are a tough cookie with the world fastened to your shoelace and on others you are a soddy piece of muffin, friable, out of place with the slightest touch.
all of it comes with just one certainty, JUST a single dogmatic certainty—It gets ugly, at SOME point. Time and again.
so there I was in a self-inflicted oblivion, and no doubt charmed to my toenails, counting on to what was for sure promised on the cover. It always is, by the principle of a Gaussian curve forsooth.
I had seen people cower, deny, lie, cheat, escape. They in essence made me sick to my soul, but when faced with such a probability I couldn’t help but be vulnerable myself.
BY the usual protocol, I start questioning my choices, cower, lie, and cheat. No, I don’ t escape, at least I think I do not . Until one day, it all withers away on its own.
the same old vicious circle.
I’ve had my share of tears, to an extent that I barely cry now.Its pathetic.period.
Dry eyes can be such bitches.
so what now..
what’s this?
shared passions? Astrology? Food ?

“what do you think is the matter with the 0.1% bacteria that dettol cannot kill?”
“I don’t know, he’s from Rajnikant’s spit??”

“have you read Aatish Taseer by any chance?”
“I LOVE HIM!!”
“*sighs*”

“The beatles, Leonard Cohen, Frank Sinatra?”
“Geeta Dutt, Gulzar, and Celtic folk songs…”

“we aren’t really cheesy are we?”
“Oh baby, we sure are not..”

“*ahem* I don’t share my food, NOT even the omlette”
“sure, I’ll have the tomatoes then.”

“flirt around please, you look so happy when you do..”

“my sole says hi..”
*wiggling toes at the screen* “hiiiii!!”

You are hell bent on being your old garden-variety-pessimist, what with 10,000 miles and a tiny plastic blue sword.
, and suddenly the shuffle picks ,

“maybe there’s a God above, but all I’ve ever learnt from love,
is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya,
its not a cry that you hear at night,
its not somebody who’s seen the light ,
it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah ‘

which leaves you wondering,
just like before,
the rains that you somehow could never love,
the unexpected winters
a few more unexpected gifts life has had in store,
fights over photographs
, crossword dates,
and one pina colada too many.

that rock-solid fact.
you keep on mapping out your destiny,
waiting for miracles to happen
but life doesn’t give you miracles ,
it gives you chances.
and this,
is the only one

So you clasp your hair into a neat bun,
put on your reading glasses,
and finally,
wait for that call.

humor me

Today, I crave for words,
words, which burlesque through the dark recesses of my mind,
that tap, knock, bang on the walls of my head time and again.
Words which are conveniently forgotten, only to be reminded of their absence later.
Old teakwood flat patina top family heirloom words,
muffled giggles, teary eyed, backyard conspiracy words
Schneiderian doctrines, Lutherian catechisms,
hammered beliefs, twisted psychology words.

words with those tiny sounds in between,
the anticipatory, (albeit) intrepid hisses , those tiny two clucks of disappointment
exiguous, relieved tiny exhales , throaty firefly breaths of words.

words that miraculously sit everywhere,
on the floor, walls, roof of your mouth,
only to bounce off on touch,
fading lukewarm mischief, and silent twinkles of words.

Say all that I need, for all that I want
let them creep inside my eyes wide shut,
lyrical prose, nonsensical poetry,
oxymoronic jargon, part-truth, part-noise words

and we shall

That we shall,
live our tales
and pickle our words in them
only to find each other drenched
in each others’ voices

when we aren’t watching,
see, you always had a penchant

for dreams carved into phrases,
phrases strummed into whispers,
whispers carved into poetry
and poetry seeping in
through cracks in the door,
the sheer curtains
and parted lips..

didn’t you

and we shall

That we shall,
live our tales
and pickle our words in them
only to find each other drenched
in each others’ voices

when we aren’t watching,
see, you always had a penchant

for dreams carved into phrases,
phrases strummed into whispers,
whispers carved into poetry
and poetry seeping in
through cracks in the door,
the sheer curtains
and parted lips..

didn’t you

the mud soaked sock

speaking metaphorically, the road less traveled, wasn’t the one less trampled upon
it didn’t have a gallimaufry of stubborn vegetation nor the nuances of a lone melancholy poem,
puddles, bundles of them and boot shaped, huge,hideous and distinct.
they had life growing in them, in the murky waters they contained,
and they were hard to miss,
easier to step on will be more precise.
but on the contrary , they carried something the surrounding virgin earth didn’t.
they had stench of determination,
the stains of hope
it was as if you could just see in the waters,
by the burlesque of light
that these happened to be tread upon with fearsome courage,
no, not wrath, not rebellion,
just some eccentric, unusual courage
enough to send shivers to my spine,
to send me running back to my safe shelters of mediocrity.
see, That is what’s wrong with these such roads,
they leave you with filthy feet as souvenirs..

of drapes and smoke..

Of late I crumpled stars into a fist,
and wore a delirious wisp of smoke on my mane
long gone is the time when I was a fugitive in your land
but my fingers still smell of stardust
and your whispers trickle down my head..

your fires burn in the little behind my neck
they keep me going even in hours of distress, hours of chicanery, and hours of rebellion.
so IT IS impossible to leave this land.
this land of yours where dreams are traded for puzzles,
where solving the labyrinth of life is an addiction.

and why not,
I see those tiny questions crawling under your skin when you are asleep.
those tiny questions that light up your face,
that make you beautiful to me,
that makes me want to steal you from this world of yours.

here is where your quest has led me to,
as a hermit in this strange planet
of what lies in those clenched fists,
in a delirious slumber by the sheer turquoise drapes..